


Nothing Is Finished

by stuffandnonsense



Series: Ripples on a Hellmouth: Further Tales [5]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Community: seasonal_spuffy, F/M, Multiple Spikes as tragedy not porn, Post-Series, There is no neat resolution either, Time Travel, there is no smut here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:34:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27438166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stuffandnonsense/pseuds/stuffandnonsense
Summary: Buffy Summers jumped from the tower to close Glory's portal in 2001, and Spike only survived her death because Dawn needed him.But Buffy's sacrifice didn't work. In 2023, the world is about to end and Faith starts travelling back in time, trying to fix it. Facing down her own death, Dawn has a plan to send Spike somewhere he won't have to lose everything: a dimension where Buffy is still alive.The only problem is, so is her husband: Spike.Like all of theFurther Tales, this can be read as a stand-alone what-if. But you may appreciate it more after readingRipples.
Relationships: Spike & Dawn Summers, Spike/Buffy Summers, Spike/Other references
Series: Ripples on a Hellmouth: Further Tales [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1411519
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> You may have read a slightly different version of Chapter 1, back when it was my offering for Seasonal Spuffy in May 2020. Chapter 2 onwards appeared in Seasonal Spuffy, November 2020, before being posted here, but there was virtually no editing.

Spike’s eyes burned from trying not to blink. Faith was leaning away from the circle of his arms so she could drop her all-powerful seed into Willow’s all-powerful bowl to send herself back in time. The sick churning sensation in his gut of magic and wrongness just kept getting worse, but this time, he’d promised to catch her. Do what he could to distract her from the pain.

The seed was taking forever to fall, and Spike couldn’t help it: he blinked. For the fourth time, he missed the half a heartbeat when her body was vacant before the jolt of re-entry that shuddered through her and into him, leaving his legs weak and wobbly. He kissed her, but it didn’t feel right. Faith didn’t melt into him like this, and she never kissed back like her life depended on it.

It would be just like the dozy witch to bring back the wrong person, abandoning Faith to her body-hopping in the past. Willow’d been vacillating between catastrophising worse than Cassandra and all the signs of a full-blown God complex ever since they’d forced her back into practising magic last year. They were long past due a balls-up of apocalyptic proportions.

Spike shoved the bodysnatcher away and she stumbled back, tripping over the side table and sitting down abruptly on the sofa. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Faith?” Willow asked carefully.

He tensed. Clearly she had her doubts, too.

“Buffy.” It sounded wrong in Faith’s voice, especially minus the venom she usually added when speaking that name. “I’m Buffy.”

_Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy._

Spike didn’t notice he’d fallen until he clocked he was staring up at Faith’s body from the floor. “Not possible,” he breathed, scrambling away from her and crashing into the wall like a complete berk. “She’s been dead twenty-two years….” Four months. No, three months and twenty-eight days. He tried to hold onto every scrap of memory, but they were already slipping. It made him hate himself.

“Surprise?” Faith’s voice – tentative, almost frightened – snapped Spike out of his fit of the guilts. It was so bloody wrong on every level imaginable for either woman to sound like that.

But he could only sense Faith. He couldn’t smell Buffy, couldn’t feel that siren thrum of Buffy-and-slayer whose absence had resounded in his head and his heart ever since she jumped off that tower. He jerked himself back into some semblance of control and said, “Prove you’re Buffy.”

“But Buffy’s the only thing that explains the change,” Willow said, almost gleefully. “The other times Faith went back, nothing really happened. This is the first time I can feel something.”

Spike suddenly thought of the stranger in Buffy’s body he’d run across a couple times in the nineties: kept insisting she was Buffy, but he’d known absolutely it was someone else. He’d reckoned on all those memories being brand new today, created by Faith when she started mucking about in their past. But that stranger hadn’t acted anything like Faith, either. Could it have been Buffy all along?

“I take it I succeeded in not being resurrected,” Buffy-Faith said drily.

Willow gaped at her, horror-stricken. “We – _I_ took you out of heaven?”

It was the answering expression on Faith’s face that finally convinced him. No one could pull off carve-my-own-heart-out-to-make-you-feel-better like Buffy Anne Summers. Spike tucked his nose between his knees and absolutely did not cry.

“You thought I was in a hell dimension.” Faith’s voice echoed in his skull while he tried (and failed) to remember exactly how it should have sounded. “You were saving me.”

Willow kept talking, but all Spike could think was that if he thought for a single second that Buffy was trapped in hell, there was nothing he wouldn’t have done to get her out. “D-did I-?” he asked shakily.

“You knew nothing about it,” Buffy-Faith said quickly.

Spike wasn’t sure whether it hurt or healed him that she knew immediately where his mind was going, and how quick she was to reassure him.

“But you were the only one I told for a long time,” she continued. “And you helped me get through it.”

His head seemed to nod itself, relief coursing through him. For all that it was his fault she’d had to jump off the tower in the first place, at least he hadn’t buggered up her afterlife too.

Buffy-Faith seemed suddenly very interested in the living room. “So whose place is this?”

“Theirs,” Willow said. “Faith and Spike’s.”

Spike instantly felt ashamed. This wasn’t a home like Buffy was used to. He and Faith never stayed anywhere more than a few months – both transient at heart – and they travelled light. He had a sudden, visceral memory of Joyce’s carefully curated living room, from the very first time he stepped inside their house in Sunnydale. He remembered being surprised by the touches of taste in such a horrifically suburban setting.

“It’s … nice,” Buffy-Faith said, nowhere near as tactfully as she thought she had. It made Spike feel both heartsick and relieved. Like he was the one in the wrong body.

“So you’re together?” she continued, just as un-tactfully.

Spike twitched. Another so purely Buffy expression on Faith’s face did odd things to his stomach. “‘S complicated.” It wasn’t. The sex and companionship he had with Faith was by far the simplest part of his life. But he couldn’t imagine Buffy approving, or even understanding.

“You died,” Buffy-Faith said softly. “Six years ago.”

Their eyes met. “Yeah?”

She nodded. “Hero’s death. Champion, even.” Her voice wavered at the word ‘champion’.

He laughed, convinced she was making up stories. “‘M no hero, Buffy.” Saying her name again set his mouth on fire, burning his lips and tongue.

“I know you are.” She paused, expression unreadable. “But you don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to.”

“Were we friends?” he asked cautiously. He couldn’t imagine any other reason for her to be so solicitous. The Buffy he’d known wouldn’t have bothered. Not for him.

Buffy-Faith laughed, a surreal mishmash of both women. “We were never friends.”

“‘Course not,” he snapped, angry with himself for daring to hope. “What can I have been thinkin’?”

He caught the faintest suspicion of hurt on her face. Then she whispered, “You were my everything.”

Never, not even in his wildest fantasies, had Spike imagined hearing _that_. He’d spent a quarter century believing the best he’d ever get was ‘trusted ally’. On a really good day. His entire universe quietly imploded, realigning itself along a different axis.

Willow cleared her throat ostentatiously; Spike had completely forgotten she was there.

“Um, not to interrupt old home week or anything, but we still need to fix the past.”

Buffy-Faith nodded, turning away from him and towards Willow. Spike kidded himself it was reluctant.

“Right. I had two priorities. Make sure no one resurrected me in 2001.” There was a slightly awkward pause, which he assumed was for Willow’s benefit. “And stop all the potentials from being activated a year and a half later.”

Willow was talking again, probably about something important, but Spike was transfixed by Buffy-Faith’s frown of concentration, at complete odds with the lines around Faith’s mouth and smooth forehead. It really was Buffy in there.

“So how’d you guys end the apocalypse of 2003, then?”

Spike snapped back into the conversation, glaring Willow into silence. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Hardly the issue at hand, is it?” If Buffy cared at all, she definitely wouldn’t want to hear that story.

Buffy-Faith sighed. “I take it me staying dead creates more problems than it solves?”

“Old Ones’re comin’ back,” he replied, exhausted by the telling of it. “Closed Hellmouths springin’ back to life, new ones popping up. It’s all we can do to keep up with them.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

Spike zoned out of the conversation again, hungrily watching for more signs of Buffy. There was definitely something about the set of her shoulders. Faith always looked ready for a fight; Buffy didn’t. Faith fidgeted. Constantly. Buffy held herself almost vampire-still.

“I don’t want to leave heaven if I can help it,” Buffy-Faith said. She sounded shaky and unlike herself. It made him want to do something – anything – to fix it, take that look off her face. But he had no idea what to do.

“We sent Faith back to stop you from jumping,” Willow said quickly.

Spike blinked. That had never been the plan, so far as he knew. Everyone agreed Buffy’s death was a fixed point, unchangeable.

“I don’t think a resurrection is an option anymore,” Willow continued, resolutely avoiding eye contact with Spike. “The me I was, back then I mean, I would’ve checked where you were first.”

Buffy-Faith sank back against the sofa. “So why’s it such a problem that I died?”

“It’s not so much you dying as how you died. Because you closed Glory’s portal and not Dawn, there was a tiny crack. Something on the other side has been using a sort of mystical crowbar to slowly pry it open ever since.”

Spike could practically see the penny dropping. “Was Faith supposed to stop me from dying, or stop me from dying _instead of Dawn_?”

Willow shrugged, a combination of guilty and brazen that made Spike wish he could take all Buffy’s hurt out on her. They’d brought Dawn kicking and screaming through to adulthood together, goddamnit. How _dare_ she shrug like that. “Either one would do the job,” he grunted.

Buffy-Faith turned her rage and betrayal on Spike. Because of course she did; two decades and a completely different bloody dimension were hardly going to change that. Eyes narrowed, entire body tensed and ready to fight – no, ready to kill: “You promised to protect her.”

He wanted to drop to his knees and beg for forgiveness. Instead, he said, “It’s the end of the world. An’ it wasn’t my decision.”

“Dawnie said to do it?” Her knuckles were white where she gripped the chair.

Spike nodded. “Insisted.”

“How is she?” The pure want in Buffy-Faith’s voice made him wonder if her version of Dawn was gone.

“Good.” He said it quickly, trying to be reassuring. Even though it was all bollocks. If – no, when – Faith succeeded in changing the past, Dawn was going to disappear from this reality and everyone but Faith would forget she’d ever survived Glory’s tower.

Suddenly, he had an idea. Time-travelling Buffy would remember today, no matter what Faith did. She could remember Dawn and her girls for the both of them – because whatever front she thought she was putting on right now, he knew this was killing Willow just as much as it was him.

“Hang on a tic,” Spike said, almost giddy. He pushed himself to his feet and went into the bedroom, where his phone lay next to his wallet and keys on the dresser. He picked it up and navigated straight to the photos of Anouk and Michelle.

As he walked back down the hallway, he heard Willow saying, “We’re just a … a temporary branch you created on one of your trips to the past.” He paused to close his eyes and breathe. He tried not to take the bouts of doom-and-gloom too seriously, but it knackered him all the same.

“Take it that means Faith’s gone for good,” Spike said evenly. As he stepped through the doorway, Willow started scratching herself again. As ever, completely unaware she was doing it.

“I don’t know,” Willow said, a little of her old excitement about magical discovery leaking through the edges of what passed for resolve face these days. “If we’re just a temporal blip, this entire dimension will cease to exist – no more any of us.” She turned back towards Buffy-Faith. “If it’s an alternate dimension in its own right, and we’ve somehow just intersected with each other, then maybe Faith comes back after you leave.”

That pout was all Buffy; Spike’s chest ached at the sight of it.

“Time travel makes my head hurt.”

“Not really your problem,” Willow said brightly, with a gleam Spike had learned to mistrust. “No matter what happens, you’ll never see us again.”

Spike pointedly turned his back on Willow and dropped his phone into Buffy-Faith’s lap. He could smell her tears from the first picture, although he never saw any fall. He’d intended to tell her more about all the people she was looking at, but watching her flick through everyone and everything he was about to lose, he could never find the words quick enough.

“I’m sorry I’m not Faith,” Buffy-Faith said, halfway through.

Spike stifled a giggle at the surreality of it all. He and Faith had said their goodbyes before her first jump. All his panic was reserved for who he’d be after losing Buffy _and_ Dawn in 2001, if he’d still exist at all. He wasn’t sure he could survive it today, let alone back when he was barely more than a hanger-on in their old band of buggered.

He pulled on his old and comfortable armour of disdain. “Let’s get you gone. Save the world and all that rot.”

Buffy-Faith reached the end of the album, then went back to the shot of Dawn breastfeeding and making goofy faces at Faith. Stroking the screen one last time, she returned the phone. “Thank you. You don’t know what this means to me.”

“Died, did she?” he asked, wanting to be sure.

Buffy-Faith nodded. “She saved a lot of people, though.”

“That’s my girl.” Spike grinned through the pain. Because of course she had. Selfless bitches, that whole bloody family.

“She didn’t have much of a life for a long time before that. Seeing her so happy….”

Spike wanted to shag her. Quick and dirty up against the wall, if he was completely honest. It’d knock at least one major regret off his list, even if it was in the wrong body.

Alongside that though, he wanted to offer Buffy comfort. He just didn’t know how. She’d never let him before, not truly. Was a hand on the shoulder alright? She’d seemed to appreciate that once. He expected there to be some kind of explosion of love or power or _something_ when his fingertips skimmed her skin in a barely-there squeeze. But it was just Faith’s shoulder under his hand, same as it always was. He slipped his phone into his pocket and fled back to the other side of the room

“Got any advice?” Buffy-Faith asked Willow, trying surreptitiously to wipe her eyes.

“Staying alive would be good,” she replied. “You’ve done this a few times – I’m guessing you already know going back to the day of the battle won’t change much.”

That answered that question – it had been time-travelling Buffy he’d met those times.

“Got that memo.”

“You wanted to die by the end of that year,” Spike blurted. “Don’t reckon you ever planned on comin’ back from the tower.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets and stared at the floor to stop himself from grabbing onto her and begging her not to leave. The Buffy he loved would never agree to stay, and it could only hurt her to have to refuse. “Need to fix your death wish. Give yourself reasons to live.”

Buffy-Faith smiled wryly. “I don’t think anything good happened that year.”

“Can be depressed without wantin’ to die,” Spike said sharply, willing it to be true for himself as much as for her. Maybe more.

“Boy howdy,” Willow added, nodding. “And even if you know you can’t change something, try harder. Sometimes, if you know you tried, it’s easier to live with yourself after.”

“Or not,” Spike growled, fists clenching with barely-contained violence.

Willow threw him a pitying glance; she knew him far too well.

Buffy-Faith pulled a seed from her pocket. She got up off the sofa, and walked towards the bowl.

Willow’s voice hissed in Spike’s mind: _Say something before it’s too late!_

Before Spike could do anything better than croak awkwardly, Buffy-Faith was dropping her seed in the bowl. His eyes locked onto hers as it fell, unable to blink even if he’d wanted to.

A half-heartbeat later, Faith fell to her knees, roaring, “You fucker, you promised you’d catch me!”

“Hooo!” Willow breathed, sagging against the wall. “And we’re still here.”

“Not for long,” Faith said, voice hoarse with pain. “I know how to fix the past.”

When Spike finally rubbed at his burning eyes, his hand came away wet.


	2. Chapter 2

Ever since Willow went all starry-eyed about the prospect of Spike-and-Buffy-together-again, Spike couldn’t help but wonder if he’d just built it all up in his head. Whether the years with Dawn and Willow and that godawful bot had magically added up to something with the real Buffy he’d only ever retconned into those halcyon days when she’d still been alive and he’d been trying to help her save the world.

Ha bloody ha.

He caught his first glimpse of her a week after landing in beautiful downtown Cleveland, from behind and far away. But he’d know those moves anywhere, and the thrum of Buffy’s presence still made his skin sing like nothing else. Didn’t matter how far away he was, or that she was all bundled up like the Michelin Man. Watching her dismember what looked like a Lossgar demon – without a single weapon – had him so hard it hurt, and Spike was running towards her before he even realised what he was doing.

Way back when, she’d never have noticed the difference between the likes of him and the great unwashed vampire riffraff, and despite Dawn’s thirtieth birthday – plus Willow’s fortieth five years later – Buffy remained forever twenty in his mind. As Spike got to within the last few yards of her, his brain finally caught up with his cock and it struck him that she’d probably learned to use her slayer senses in the intervening years. That hitch in her shoulders told him she could feel ‘old’ and ‘powerful’ at the very least, so he scarpered back the way he’d come for all he was worth. It wasn’t exactly the profound moment he’d hoped for, seeing her for the first time after so long. But it would do. It was _Buffy_ and suddenly Spike found himself breathless in a way he couldn’t remember since he’d stopped needing oxygen to survive.

So now here he was, finally outside her painfully suburban house, lock-picks at the ready and hefting a bag full of surveillance equipment. He’d spent the last few nights picking Buffy up and losing her again in every graveyard and shady industrial district in Cleveland, but last night he’d finally managed to follow her home. The house was all very … nice. White Christmas lights festooned the porch – vomited straight out of Nordstrom’s, Spike bet – illuminating baby-blue wooden deck chairs that were bang on trend for the summer home set. There was an immaculate snow-covered lawn out front and a dull silver Ford bloody Focus parked on a meticulously shovelled drive. Just looking at the place made the space between his shoulder blades itch with a desperate need to escape. But he couldn't do that, not after having waited interminable hours in the snow and the cold for them to bloody well leave.

 _Them_ because that other bastard was still there. Seeing another version of himself with her…. It was absolutely fucking awful. Logically, Spike knew it was a good sign. If all he’d done was get to the right dimension too early, his alternate should still be underfoot. But watching himself _with her_ all he could think about was how unworthy he was. How unworthy both of them were. Like, did he really wave his hands about like that when he talked? Made him look a right prat. It damn near broke his heart.

Thankfully, there were no glaring differences aside from some basic disagreements in aesthetics. The other Spike had embraced the practicalities of winters in Cleveland with a puffy jacket and snow boots, plus his skin-tight black jeans looked more trendy than practical. Also, weirdly, he kept his hair short and spiked like Spike hadn’t since the early eighties and had clearly never lost the habit of dying it radioactive white back in the summer of 2001. Once he was ready to break into the house, Spike made sure a similar coat and boots and a knit cap covered the difference.

He also made every effort to look like he had a key: a place like this was bound to have nosy neighbours. Spike was endlessly grateful when the lock turned out to be the kind he could’ve opened with a credit card. Taking a closer look at the latch, he saw signs of the door having been kicked in and repaired any number of times. He supposed it was one of those things, whatever the dimension. Christ knew nasties came knocking for him and Faith often enough – and it cost them their security deposit every sodding time.

Easing the door open, Spike had his first big shock. He'd counted on the house smelling like him: it was why he wasn’t worried another vampire would notice the break-in. But the only bits of Buffy’s scent he really remembered were the potions and lotions she’d once slathered herself with. And only those because he used to raid her bathroom so he could pretend she spent enough time in his crypt for her fragrance to linger. He was absolutely unprepared for the unadorned musk that permeated the house, all heady power and spicy heat. Despite his best intentions, Spike found himself sinking to the floor one step past the doorway, already breathless again, and overcome by a tsunami of grief and joy and … _Buffy_.

But what really undid him was the way his own scent intertwined and intermingled with hers. It spoke of a shared life, something he never could have imagined without evidence. So there he sat, eyes shut, trying to breathe in every last molecule for far longer than he ought to have done. It took everything he had to keep from having a wank right there in the hall, pretending he was coming home, that she was his. Only fear of his mess being discovered held him back.

The proof of their shared life only got stronger the more Spike looked. A pair of black, steel-toed boots were lined up next to the front door, alongside a pair of thigh-highs in grey, buttery leather that gave Spike fond memories of the first few times he’d seen Buffy, back in her thong and high kicks days. The symbolism of her longer, softer boots draped around his might even have warmed the cockles of a better man’s heart.

Trying to pull himself together, Spike stood up and finally paid attention to the layout of the place. The stairs to the second floor were a few feet away from the front door, just before the hallway narrowed into a corridor with one (closed) door to the right, leading off to what Spike assumed was the basement, and another one at the end (open), leading into the kitchen – which seemed as good a place to start as any.

Aside from the usual accoutrements, the kitchen cupboards revealed the kind of cheap black tea Spike liked and the accumulated detritus of years of failed attempts to make animal blood taste halfway decent. Not even sure why he’d looked, it made Spike’s stomach do funny things to see more blood in their freezer than there were carefully dated and labelled tupperware boxes. Willow, it seemed, fed her friends in every universe. And Buffy was a hell of a lot more understanding about his eating habits than Faith ever had been.

He placed the first video camera inside a dusty colander hanging from a wall rack and went to open the connecting door. It was locked, and with a much more sophisticated mechanism than the one leading outside.

When Spike finally got the bastard thing open – having exhausted every expletive he knew in at least seven different languages – he thought it was their bedroom. The reek of sweat and sex and blood was overpowering. There were years-old scents overlaid and refreshed by new ones, until he could almost see the two of them fighting and fucking in ghostly perpetuity. It also brought to vivid life a cascade of explicit fantasies Spike hadn’t allowed himself access to in years. Then he remembered to use his other senses, and was forced to accept it was nowhere near as exciting as all that.

The room was more dojo than anything else: sprung floors, half-decent soundproofing, and walls covered in weapons. And aside from one hideously kitschy, sparkly-red-and-chrome axe that looked more like a film prop than a weapon, they were all well-made and expensive. He ran his hands covetously over a matching pair of swords that would’ve already been antiques back when he was alive. They were probably from the Watcher; Rupes certainly liked spending money enough.

Spike had to admit it was a pretty good set-up. To himself, anyway. He would absolutely sneer if anyone asked.

He lay down on one of the exercise mats already laid out and stared up at the Artex ceiling, trying to work out the story behind the slayer blood he could smell. He didn’t think it was Buffy’s, for all his hopes and dreams on first scenting it. He couldn’t be a hundred percent sure, given how long it’d been, but he thought hers held something more … depth of flavour, maybe? And wasn’t that a crushing disappointment. Because slayer blood on tap was the holy grail for any vamp, even a reformed one.

She and Nordstrom-Spike were definitely the only ones having sex in here, but there were at least … five? No. Six others who trained here often enough to leave traces. Six _slayers_. And five of them had been injured badly enough to bleed. What the hell happened in this reality for there to be so many slayers? Reluctantly, Spike got to his feet. He really needed to finish what he came for and get out before anyone came home. Once the second video camera had gone into prime position to catch the action, whatever form it might take, he carefully locked up after himself.

Upstairs was less personal. Mostly. There were two bedrooms; a full bathroom; and the displaced living and dining rooms. The first bedroom looked generic, but stank of magic and Willow, while the other smelled more like fake lemons than any one person. He couldn’t see or smell anything of Dawn, which worried him a little – when Dawn moved out and he and Willow parted ways, they’d both always kept a room for her, no matter where either of them lived. The extra expense drove Faith nuts, particularly once Michael came on the scene and Dawn decided they needed more privacy than any room in a vamp’s apartment could ever provide.

But this Dawn and Buffy stayed together, so maybe it wasn’t the same.

Spike felt no need to spy on either of the spare rooms, but after he picked up the faintest traces of bleached bloodstains in the bathroom grouting he put a microphone in there, just in case. There were no other signs that anyone who lived there used it, though.

The dining room seemed like it was mostly a home office, so it got the third video camera, angled for the laptop screen.

Everything he’d seen so far could’ve come straight out of an Ikea catalogue – cheap, showy, and impersonal. But then Spike stepped into the master bedroom turned living room and – well. That was so personal it hurt.

They had a telly and a decent games console for 2016, but that all shrank to insignificance in comparison to the shelves upon shelves of books. So far so library. And after only the briefest of glances Spike knew they were mostly his. Or rather, other-his. The romance novels he hated anyone to know he read were brazenly on display, instead of hidden away on his phone like they should be. Ditto the godawful sappy poetry he desperately wished he hated as much as he always said he did. But worst of all – if that middle Billy bookcase was any indicator – it looked like he was covering a significant portion of the research brief usually reserved for Giles’ brigade of tweedy minions. Spike had done his bit for research these last few months – end of the world and all, it was only right for everyone to muck in. And there’d been one or two tight spots in the past, too. But he didn’t hang on to the priceless bloody artefacts afterwards, did he! And Christ knew Buffy would rather gnaw her own arm off than read anything more complex than a fashion magazine.

He spun around, desperate for anywhere else to focus, until his gaze landed on the soft, fuzzy blanket draped over the top of the sofa. A blanket that looked suspiciously like an exact colour-match to his eyes. Smelled of him, too. Disgusted – the likes of him weren’t supposed to be bothered by cold – Spike turned back to the shelves.

Photos in brightly-coloured lacquer frames were scattered around in front of the books, making it look even more like an Ikea commercial. Spike’s eye was immediately drawn to one of the ones of Dawn. She looked so happy. Softer, somehow, too. Like life had been kinder to her. He thought about snatching it – there were so many, they’d hardly notice one missing. But no photo would make his Dawn less dead, or relieve her of any of the burdens he’d watched her pick up, one loss at a time.

He told himself he could always come back for it later.

Then he noticed _them_ : five or six snaps of himself in a penguin suit alongside Buffy in – horror of horrors – an eye-blisteringly white wedding dress, the both of them grinning like loons. Spike actually shuddered at the sight. It was hard enough discovering a version of himself stuck in a suburban hellhole like this without the added absurdity of learning he’d become some sodding Stepford groom in a traditional bloody wedding. What the hell had Buffy done to him?

When Spike found the journal – in his own handwriting, all full of his alternate’s precious thoughts and feelings – he dropped a microphone behind the dustiest group of books he could immediately see and ran back into the hallway like the hordes of hell were hot on his heels.

He hadn’t kept a journal since before he was turned. The Spike who lived here had to be fully domesticated. Neutered, in a way the Initiative and their control chip had never been able to manage. No wonder he died. Who in their right mind would live like this?

Ready to be done with this house of horrors, Spike stomped downstairs in search of the basement and what was presumably ‘their’ bedroom. If there wasn’t a half decent toy box down there, he’d just burn the place down and call it quits. Wait for time-travelling-Buffy to come back and seduce her instead. He’d likely stand a better chance, anyway – it still made every hair on his body stand on end remembering the way she’d looked at him. But Dawn and Willow had insisted, sending him back to just after the other Spike died was safest. For which he definitely heard ‘Buffy wouldn’t have settled for someone else in the meantime’, no matter how hard they denied it.

Early signs were promising. The door to the basement led down to a sort of vestibule with a washer and dryer and two more doors. The first one he opened was the bathroom, which had an enormous multi-jet shower area complete with ergonomically-designed ledges and handholds, plus a bath that could probably fit three in a pinch. It was almost entirely black tile, with silver and white highlights here and there, and accented by blood-red towels. It looked like it belonged in the kind of five-star boutique hotel Angelus and Darla used to like best, and it had Spike wondering who’d been in charge of decorating the rest of the house. Because if anyone ever gave him carte blanche to kit out a bathroom, this was pretty much what he’d choose. Needless to say, there was none of that designer mock-seventies-floral chic that saturated the one upstairs.

Then Spike noticed there wasn’t a single scented product, and he didn’t know what to do with that. The headaches he got from Faith’s collection were one of the very few things they properly rowed about. But it all seemed so at odds with the perfect suburban life this Spike and Buffy had.

The bathroom had a connecting door through to the master bedroom, and Spike was forced to admit he liked that, too. It took up a good three quarters of the floor space of the house, and was all dark, rich, colours, instead of the fake beech, muted pastels, and never-quite-matching off-whites that ruled above. It also had no windows, which was a level of personal safety he definitely hadn’t expected. Spike suddenly wondered how many of the flimsily-curtained windows he’d seen upstairs were necro-tempered.

But there were still some nasty surprises lurking under the veneer of respectability. Spike found a drawerful of multicoloured men’s socks that made him want to poke his own eyes out just to stop the glare. And equally colourful silk boxers, when he hadn’t worn underwear since the advent of denim. Although it was only a couple of pairs, and they smelled almost as much of Buffy as him, so maybe it wasn’t so bad as all that?

The bed was more stylish than he’d expected – real wood, looked like it’d been carved by hand. It was sturdy, too: enough to withstand the horizontal gymnastics of the super-strong. And was that the clink of a chain somewhere underneath? It wasn’t until Spike was testing out the bounce – not much; good quality foam – that he found the one thing sufficient to convince him to stick around for the next seven years. Or seventy, if called for. And it wasn’t the toy box, although he did find one under the bed much later, and it was more than adequate.

As soon as his nose got near the sheets, it was very, very clear that interior-decorator-Spike was drinking Buffy’s blood on the regular. Awed and reverent, he lay down in their bed, soaking up the scents of her and him and glorious, intoxicating slayer blood and finally had that wank. It was quite possibly the best one he’d ever had.

He hadn’t been at all sure about what he’d do in this dimension until he was lying there, emotionally and physically spent. But knowing that his tosser of a twin had sussed out a way to drink Buffy’s blood without frying his brain made Spike’s pathway much clearer. He wanted this life, so badly he could feel it burning inside him.

It wouldn’t be perfect, but then what life was? Willow’d wanted him to talk to Buffy. Tell her what was happening. He knew it was still what he should do. He absolutely knew that. But since when was he in the business of doing the right thing? No one had ever accused him of being selfless. Selflessness was why the Buffy and Dawn he’d known and loved were dead.

Ideal scenario, he’d watch and wait for his alternate to die, then step neatly in and take his place. No fuss, no muss. No one ever had to know there’d ever been two of them, so Buffy would feel no pain. And if the doppelgänger needed a little help to get out of the way? Well then.

It hurt, dragging himself out of their bed, then out of their house. So badly he nearly couldn’t do it at all. But it was necessary. For now, anyway. Eventually, he’d come back to claim everything that should’ve been his.


	3. Chapter 3

“You know I love you, right?” Dawn asked. Again.

Faith snorted, and Spike only just managed not to roll his eyes. It was exactly the phrasing and intonation she’d used all through her teens and early twenties when she wanted something and he didn’t immediately capitulate.

It turned out there was a plan. Had been ever since Willow found the spell to send Faith’s spirit back to inhabit (or inhibit) past Scoobies, and Dawn decided Spike needed to be swept off to a nice, safe, dimension before the present had a chance to re-align itself to the reality where _both_ Summers sisters died in 2001. While Spike listened, incredulous, to the little menace crowing about how she’d been patiently waiting in the coffee shop round the corner for Faith to figure out how to fix the past, the slayer herself drifted over to sit on the sofa and started fussing with her favourite knife and a whetstone, expression unreadable.

Then, as Willow got stuck into re-telling time-travelling Buffy’s visit, Anyanka apparated right into their living room. _That_ elevated the whole thing to a full-blown conspiracy. Because like all good scheming cabals, there had to be someone who ought never to have been involved. And Anyanka fit to a T – she’d not just burned every bridge but salted the earth after, back when she and Rupes split.

Once Dawn put her mind to something, there was no stopping her. And this bonkers plan of theirs had her fingerprints all over it.

“I’m not exactly sure where – or when – you’ll end up.” Willow was furiously scratching at her arm. “It’s kinda like racing Formula One with a sensory deprivation helmet on.”

Anyanka smirked. “If only you hadn’t burned out your third eye playing patty-cakes with—”

“Leave her alone,” Dawn snapped.

“Fine,” Anyanka huffed airily, like she was doing them all a favour. Which, Spike supposed, she was.

“What with having Buffy here just now, I’m pretty sure I can lock onto her reality, get you back to when the other Spike died.” Willow’s breath hitched, and suddenly she came over all starry-eyed. “You two can be together.”

Looking back and forth between a serenely uninterested Faith and a romance-drunk Willow, Spike was at a complete loss. “But … _why_?” he asked again.

Dawn was incredulous. “How can you even ask that? You’re dead in her dimension; she’s dead here….” She gestured imperiously at him to finish the line of thought.

He still didn’t get it. “What’s that got to do with anythin’?”

“Sense of self-worth strikes again…,” Faith muttered.

Spike glared at her. “Shut it, pot.” She just smiled at him and pulled out the leather to start stropping, like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.

“We all agreed, Spike.” Dawn said it gently and firmly, like she’d remind Anouk that chocolate wasn’t dinner. “It’s not safe for you here once Faith changes your past.”

“Hey!” Willow said, mildly affronted. “ _I_ thought you’d be okay, but I was outvoted.”

“Ta. Ever so.” He wasn’t actually sure whether or not he was being sarcastic.

“I will never forget the morning I found you sitting on the roof.” Dawn’s voice was all over the place, and he still couldn’t decide how much of it was genuine and how much was messing with Willow. “If I wasn’t there….”

“Yes, yes,” Anyanka interrupted. “Spike wanted to die. And no one but you noticed. We’ve been through that.”

Spike wished desperately and hopelessly for the ground to swallow him up. “Where were you gonna send me, ‘fore Willow decided to play matchmaker?”

Dawn shrugged. “Anyanka said she knew a dimension where you’d be safe.”

Anyanka turned a decidedly odd colour, sort of flushed and pale all at the same time. “But Willow’s idea is so much better!”

Spike blinked. “What the hell makes any of you think things could ever work out between me and Buffy?”

“Because you love her,” Dawn said, shoving him. Without really thinking, he shoved her back. Anyanka stepped between them before it turned into a competition, which surprised him. He’d never thought she paid enough attention to other people’s relationships to notice something like that.

“She said you were her _everything_ ,” Willow whined. “I mean, if I had the chance to go somewhere Tara was still alive, mourning me?” She shivered, and Spike caught the briefest glimpse of Willow-from-before, back when she genuinely believed there was nothing she couldn’t fix with magic. It gave him the screaming ab-dabs. “Aren’t you curious?” she continued. “Just a little?”

“Course,” he said, nonchalantly as anything. “But curiosity’s hardly worth racin’ Formula One in a sensory deprivation helmet.”

“I may have exaggerated slightly for effect,” Willow said sheepishly. “It’s kinda nice being impressive again.”

Spike valiantly resisted the urge to punch her in the face.

“Everything will be fine,” Dawn said firmly. “The three of us have been over this spell a thousand times.”

“Oh, well,” Spike sneered. “If Twitchy, Evil-Again and Snack-Size say it’s fine….”

Anyanka stepped out of the firing line and drifted over to the sofa and Faith. “They’re still like this?” she whispered, quietly enough that Dawn couldn’t hear, but Spike could. Briefly, he wondered whether that was on purpose.

Faith nodded, a smile flickering over her lips.

“Don’t you call me – I’m taller than you!” Dawn wasn’t quite screeching. Not yet, anyway.

“Bloody act like it, then!”

“How? Looming?”

“Hey,” Faith interrupted. “You two really wanna waste your last few minutes together bickering?”

“Who said I was going anywhere?” Spike snapped.

“Babycakes.” She sounded almost sympathetic. “It’s so cute you think you have a choice here.”

He sat down cross-legged on the floor and folded his arms.

“You’re really gonna try that against a witch, a vengeance demon and a slayer?” Faith had the grace to look low-key impressed by his ‘bravery’.

“I’ll hurt you,” Anyanka chirped coquettishly. “It won’t bother me.”

Spike groaned.

“I mean….” Faith looked back and forth between him and the others. “I’m pretty sure they can just move the portal around you.”

“If you really don’t want to, we won’t do it,” Willow said.

Dawn, radiating incredulous rage, opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, Willow shouted: “Consent is important!” like a spotty teenaged boy trying to prove his feminist credentials. Spike was embarrassed on her behalf – no woman in her forties should ever say those words while looking like that.

But Dawn’s mouth still snapped shut, miracle of miracles.

“What have you got here, really?” Faith continued. “Without Dawn and her family?”

“You,” Spike replied quietly, wishing he believed it.

She smirked. “Tell me your first thought wasn’t taking Miss Priss up against a wall.”

Spike put on his best poker face, but it never worked on anyone who’d met him more than twice. Anyanka started laughing and didn’t stop until Dawn glared her into giggly submission.

After one last pointed glare, Dawn knelt down in front of Spike and took both of his hands in hers. “You’re my only family. I can’t let Faith go back unless I know you’ll be okay.” She paused. “And she has to go back.”

Spike stared mulishly up at her. He’d given up on any pretence that Dawn actually listened to him around the time she started college. But that didn’t mean he’d just roll over and do whatever she wanted.

“I love you so much.” No wheedling or manipulation this time. Those wide eyes and trembling lips were her greatest weapon because she never had any idea she was even doing it. Dawn pulled a phone’s memory card out of her pocket and placed it on his palm, curling his fingers around it. “Our wedding. All the family photos.” Her breath hitched. “I need you to remember us.”

As Spike’s resistance visibly broke, the other women didn’t even try to hide their sniggers. It was completely unfair. Sure, he’d never been able to refuse Dawn anything she really needed, but Willow gave up any hint of a backbone back when Tara’d been doing most of the parenting and no one else had ever even pretended to try. It was a bit rich them giving him grief over it now.

Dawn crawled into his lap and wrapped herself around him, and he buried his nose in her neck. For today, at least, he could pretend to the both of them that he’d never forget her scent.

“Be safe, Spike. And don’t you dare lose sight of how much we all love you.”

He expected Anyanka, at least, to deny that. Willow too. After all, their only real point of connection was Dawn, even if time and enforced proximity eventually turned them into something approaching family. And if he was completely honest with himself, he’d never been sure Faith was capable of loving anyone. The walls she’d built around her heart were just too damn high.

But none of them said a word. There was a part of him that resented it taking the actual end of the world to bring them to this point. But Dawn was the only one with reason to love him, and he still had to pinch himself every so often to believe in it.

Dawn finally extracted herself from his lap, wet and blotchy, yet so strong and determined he could barely stand to see it. No one should have to manage the end of their own existence like this. He wondered how badly he’d been letting her down all through this, just like he’d once let down her sister.

Before he could say anything, Willow stepped in, pulling Spike upright and into a hug. “Just tell Buffy how you feel and everything will be fine,” she told him.

Spike nodded dumbly. He didn’t believe in any of it for second. And while the hug was nice enough, it also proved Faith’s point: he had zero control in this situation.

Willow drew a chalk circle on the floor while Anyanka and Dawn chanted something Spike thought sounded suspiciously like a demon lullaby he half-remembered hearing decades ago in very rural Russia. Ninety percent sure Anyanka was having a laugh at the others’ expense, he tried to catch her eye. When she studiously looked anywhere and everywhere but his direction while piously chanting even louder, he was sure of it.

Chant over, Anyanka left Willow and Dawn to complete the next bit of mystical mumbo-jumbo and sidled over to him, bumping her hip against his.

“How the hell’d you get roped into this?” Spike asked.

She leaned in to kiss his cheek, all breezy and light. Then, angling herself so no one else could see, she licked the length of his jugular and whispered, “Old time’s sake.”

He blinked, wondering what the hell she could be talking about. They’d been friends of a sort for a good few months back in Sunnydale. Then Buffy died and Rupes took Anyanka with him back to sunny old, and Spike had barely seen either of them again – not for more than a couple hours – until nearly nine years ago when they reunited to save the world. Again. In the aftermath, it was obvious their relationship was in its death throes, and then Dawn told him she needed a break from the supernatural for a while, launching the number three spot for worst six months of his entire life. He’d shagged Anyanka exactly once, when they were both far too drunk and sad and thinking of other people to enjoy it properly. Spike woke up hungover and alone, and only found out later she’d left his bed to openly slaughter an entire frat house. To Spike’s knowledge, none of their mutual acquaintances had spoken to her since.

Anyanka pulled back, and he noticed for the first time how haggard she looked. “You okay?”

“How do you do it?” she asked softly, still avoiding eye contact. Then she turned her piercing, ancient gaze on him. “You play human so well, even I believe it.”

Any other day, Spike would have argued. Vociferously. Instead, he gave the best answer he had: “Love.”

Anyanka flinched. “And when love isn’t enough?”

Spike made a face at her, all sneering disbelief and bravado. “Never happen.”

Anyanka just nodded and stepped back towards Willow and Dawn, making him feel unbearably young and naive.

Despite his promises, Spike was still half-considering legging it: search out one of the baby Hellmouths, and go out fighting instead. He didn’t trust Willow to send him back however-many years into some other version of himself’s life. He trusted even less that he’d be able to slot into it. The Buffy he met might’ve mourned him, but she was still travelling through time, changing things. Who the hell knew about whichever Buffy he’d find on the other side of that portal?

He knew where he was in this world. Knew who he was. Until Faith’s next trip back, anyway.

As if summoned, Faith came to stand with him and immediately he could feel her fingers bruising him where she gripped his bicep. He realised that if he left now he’d only be backing Dawn’s conviction that, without her, he’d immediately give in to that death wish she was so sure he’d been secretly nurturing since the night Buffy jumped. He hated when that girl outsmarted him. Worse, Faith was now clearly staking her claim to stop him if he tried. Spike started quietly laughing; it was the only thing he could do not to scream.

A small velvet bag dropped into his hand. “My rainy day fund.” Faith briefly laid her cheek against his shoulder and he leaned into the touch for as long as she let him. “Few decent rubies, and some uncut diamonds that might or might not pan out. Should be at least eight grand there.”

Spike raised one eyebrow. “You been holding out on me.”

Faith shrugged. “Hadn’t rained hard enough yet.”

He stared up at the ceiling, beige and cracked and dispiriting, and rubbed at the back of his neck. “I’ll miss you.”

Faith grinned, but there was no warmth to it. “If I want you to miss me somewhere else instead of forgetting me here, does that make me a terrible person?”

“The worst,” Spike replied softly. For the first time, he wondered whether the distance between them had more to do with him than with her. Yet another thing he’d bollocksed up. “But who’s to say we wouldn’t still find each other?”

Faith’s smile slid off her face like water.

“Recall a promise you made me once. Involved ridin’ me at a gallop ‘til I popped like warm champagne.”

She snorted. “I’d have dusted you without Dawn in tow.”

“Tried. Maybe.”

She turned dead eyes on him, and raised one brow slowly. “Sure.”

Spike sighed, all the fight leaking out of him. “No escapin’ this, is there?”

Faith’s shoulders twitched. “But hey, we’re saving the world, right?”

Despite himself, he immediately thought of Buffy. “Right couple of heroes, we are.”

Faith was still laughing when they opened the portal and she callously shoved Spike through – right into the middle of a twenty-year-old nightmare.

He’d expected telly’s tried and tested atmospheric flashing lights and windstorms. _Quantum Leap_ sort of stuff. Instead, he was surrounded by all-consuming hellfire. But then, just like the last time, Spike popped back into reality. Only this time, he was fully corporeal and knee-deep in snow instead of lawyers. Gasping and jittery, he wondered what other nightmares might haunt him in this alternate world. Then he realised his skin was still smoking.

Cursing Willow, Spike ran for the shadows, wishing someone had guessed he might arrive in the middle of the sodding afternoon. As he was checking himself over for stray flames, he considered how lucky he was not to have been dropped in a field or the middle of the sea.

Suddenly, the pull of sire snapped back full force, almost bringing him to his knees. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that. He’d need to figure it out sharpish, though – knowing Dru, she’d come to investigate the duplicate Spike taking up residence inside her head. He just hoped he wouldn’t need to kill her again.

He got his phone out of his pocket and was pleasantly surprised to find it still worked. That had to be Anyanka’s gift: forcing reality to bend around him. It was the twenty-ninth of November 2016, at three-seventeen pm. He went straight to his favourites and stared down at Dawn’s number. He had to at least try it – just check she was okay. Before he could overthink it, Spike pressed the call button.

After a few rings, “ _Hi!_ ” a bright, cheery, and decidedly male voice echoed. “ _You’ve reached Dav_ —”

He hung up. Then he blocked and deleted the number, studiously ignoring the way it felt like amputating a limb. Not for the first time, he mourned the fact that the only people he’d ever managed to form any mystical connection with were Dru and Willow. He could only be thankful the one with Willow didn’t seem to have carried over into this new reality.

Spike tried to centre himself, leaning back against the wall and pulling out a cigarette. The fact that he dropped it twice trying to get it alight was absolutely, definitely, nothing more than cold fingers and a brisk wind. As he inhaled, he forced himself to shrug off the things he could do nothing to change and take proper stock of his situation.

If he was in the right time and the right dimension – and wasn’t that the biggest sodding ‘if’ he’d ever faced – then he’d be six years back in time-travelling-Buffy’s past and her Spike should be recently departed. That meant all he needed to do was ride triumphantly into town and ta-fucking-da. He could slip straight into the other Spike’s life. ‘Not so dead after all, thanks. Wouldn’t you rather have me than dust?’ Happily ever after.

Only all he could think about was the many, many times that Willow had cocked up the finer details of a spell. He was probably in a dimension exactly as cheery and hopeful as his own, minus some crustacean or other.

Spike shut his eyes and opened himself up to his surroundings. There was the faint pulse of power against his skin that came from being on a Hellmouth. That was good – there’d be the right sort of amenities in place, and a far better chance of finding the slayer.

But it also meant he had to be careful. This time of year, Buffy was generally getting her arse handed to her by whatever big bad she was going up against. If her current crew were on high alert, they were likelier to stake first and ask questions later if they noticed Spike running around again back from the dead. It’s what he would’ve done.

He stroked at the bag of gems in his pocket. Time-travelling-Buffy hadn’t said anything about her past, or what she’d been doing to change it. Spike figured he ought to sit back and watch for a while, work out the lay of the land. Couldn’t rush in blind and risk losing the snowball’s chance in hell Dawn had gifted him.


	4. Chapter 4

Spike had never dared imagine what Buffy would’ve done with herself if she’d lived. He’d agonised endlessly over what she’d think of all his big decisions – her disappointment cut no less deeply without her there to roll her eyes and sigh despairingly. And he missed being able to talk with her about Dawn so badly it felt like a lost limb. But what she might be getting up to when not laughing hysterically at his latest balls-up? He had gate crashed her story, then done the unforgiveable and fallen in love with her. What right did he have to presume?

In spite of all that, he’d had this back-of-a-beer-mat picture in his mind that whatever her life was, it’d be … epic. Mythic, even.

In retrospect, he’d eaten far too many fanboys who believed all vampires were bezzy mates with every single rich or famous person since Shakespeare for Spike to believe in ‘mythic’ anymore. Still, it wasn’t like the life emerging from his spy cameras was destroying some ideal _Slayer’s Life_ TM he’d been carrying around in lovingly wrapped tissue paper all this time. He’d just never thought it could be so full of shouting and chaos _and_ so safe and domestic all at the same time. Where were the despairing lows that made the highs that much sweeter? It was almost enough to make him miss his life of carnage with Dru.

Well, not quite so bad as all that. But he and Dru’d certainly never had to babysit teenaged slayers having hormonal rage episodes or baby werewolves with no control over their metamorphoses.

That first afternoon after he planted the cameras, Spike woke up with the sun low on the horizon and switched on the feeds to be greeted by the screeching of children, of all things. The Pale Imitation was in the dojo with two little kids somewhere around five and ten having what looked and sounded suspiciously like a tickle fight. For a long time, Spike just watched, mesmerised. He couldn’t quite decide whether to be scandalised or jealous. It wasn’t the sort of thing he’d ever pictured himself doing. Anouk and Michelle were at least as human as Dawn, which meant far too breakable for Spike to risk roughhousing like this.

Then the (older) girl’s eyes turned a disturbing shade of yellow and she opened her jaw like it was on a sodding cartoon hinge and clamped down on the other Spike’s arm. Only, instead of yelping and throwing her across the room like any other bugger’d do, he just turned around very slowly and _looked_ at her. The little boy got really over-excited at that point and did the same creepy hinge-jaw thing and leaped up to clamp his teeth around the pillock’s neck, unerringly getting the jugular in what would’ve sprouted an arterial geyser in a breather. The other Spike’s only response was to laugh – before telling off the girl for getting beaten to the kill.

This was by no means the weirdest playtime Spike saw. Those kids got dropped off at least a couple times a day for a week. Sometimes teleported in by Willow – which, what the hell happened to any kind of boundaries? She _never knocked_ – and sometimes via the front door by a harried-looking guy Spike vaguely recognised but couldn’t put a name to. The little boy was invariably sticky with food, or wearing glittery craft supplies or stolen makeup. Or crying. More often all three. And the older one had enough suppressed rage to fuel a nuclear power station. But it was always Uncle Spike who corralled them into the dojo and entertained them until they got picked up again.

Spike gathered, eventually, there was a sick middle child at home, and the parents were struggling to cope during full moon week. How any of this was Willow’s business he never did figure out. Uncle Spike sure made for a great chew toy, though. The freak.

That same night, Spike fount out why the guest bathroom smelled of blood. In addition to the little kids, there was a whole troupe of girls in their teens through early twenties stomping through the house at all hours. In and out all day for books or weapons or wanting to be shown some bit of technique or other. Chits ate anything not locked down while they were at it, too. They had to be the other slayers.

He couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen any of them out and about before.

The answer came eventually – while he’d been following Buffy and the Sad Send-Up all around Cleveland the girls had been away at some training retreat, and the grown-ups’d had to pick up the slack. Far as he could tell, the baby slayers were supposed to be doing the bulk of the hunting, with bigger guns on call if they ran into anything they couldn’t handle.

Unlike the practicality of the afternoon visits, late-nights were all about getting patched up by Buffy, and as much to do with one-on-one time to brag about their exploits and be told they were doing well than any actual need for help with the injuries. That first night, Olivia needed to be super-glued up where another girl had ‘accidentally’ nicked her with a sword. It was obvious from everyone’s reactions she was a right menace: constantly goading the others into throwing the first punch, then wiping the floor with them after. Spike liked her immediately; her ferocious prickliness reminded him of Dawn.

But for all Spike saw the girls competing way too hard for Buffy’s approval, they’d sure as hell walk through fire if she so much as considered asking for it. It was so different from the way she’d led all her chums when she was younger. She hadn’t understood her power, then. She definitely understood it now.

Spike was so entranced getting to know Buffy as an adult, he didn’t pay that much attention to the other slayers at first. Though they all looked distinctive enough he’d probably recognise them if he saw one in a different context. But it was hard not to like shit-disturbing Olivia: always putting on the biggest, baddest, brattiest front she could muster to keep anyone from seeing her desperation to be liked. So like Dawn at that age. And Kiara reminded him of the Buffy he’d once studied on videotape, for all they looked nothing alike. She was so earnest it almost hurt to watch, and breathtakingly beautiful when she fought.

He couldn’t figure out why Buffy would choose to do any of it, though. Cleveland was a Hellmouth, sure, but it was a much bigger city than Sunnydale, with too many full-humans wandering about mucking things up to really get your evil on undisturbed. It didn’t attract the kind of enemy worthy of a slayer of Buffy’s calibre, and she was wasting her talents training these little girls to handle never-ending waves of minor bads. Sure, she was good at training – she was a born leader. But that wasn’t all she was good at.

He started thinking she’d be much better off travelling around to take out the truly dangerous ones, like Faith had. Only Faith was a loner – practically allergic to putting down roots – while Buffy was the first slayer in history to deputise her nearest and dearest. And that was when he realised: grown-up Buffy wasn’t surrounded by her friends and family anymore.

No Dawn. (Spike eventually heard it mentioned she was living in New York, still with Michael thank Christ.) Willow popped in and out like it was her own home true enough, but there was neither hide nor hair of the two boys. And whoever the parents of those kids were, and whatever their connection to Buffy and Willow, they weren’t part of any Cleveland equivalent to the Sunnydale Slayerettes. No Watchers Spike ever saw, either, though the girls all whined about them often enough. Whatever research or fighting the good fight there was, Buffy was the support system now, without anyone really supporting her.

Spike couldn’t help but think she deserved better.

-∞-

If he ever wanted to stop watching and waiting and finally participate, he knew he had to make sure he and the other Spike were physically indistinguishable. A haircut and dye job later, you’d never know they weren’t the same person unless you saw them together. It freed Spike up a lot more to find out what they did when they left the house.

He’d forgotten how much the bleach blistered and burned, but thankfully the expected sting of betrayal wasn’t making it worse. He supposed it was because he’d already started forgetting his Buffy in favour of this new one. Spike had no idea how to feel about that.

One night, he even managed a few minutes with her, just to see if he could. The useless one had wandered off somewhere, and Spike stepped in to help with a big group of fledges too young and stupid to realise they were already dust in the wind. Buffy’d been doing fine – Spike had no delusions he was rescuing her from anything – but it was so long since he’d fought at her side. It felt like flying.

He still scarpered as soon as the last vamp was gone. He wasn’t ready to risk eye contact, let alone a conversation. Not yet.

-∞-

Two weeks into watching and waiting, and Spike was only getting more frustrated and confused by the relationship he saw unfolding between Buffy and his doppelgänger. For all he’d had his share of fights with Dru, and later with Faith, it’d always been against a background of a hell of a lot more shagging. This sad, wet bastard poured his emotions into telling Buffy off and then all they did was have a bit of a cuddle afterwards. Pathetic! Where was the passion?

Just last night, they’d been at it again. The same bloody fight practically every other day.

“Doesn’t have to be _you_ ,” the bellend snapped.

“Who else?” Buffy snarled. “You think Lucy’s ready to take on Grapplar demons?”

“Course I don’t. But Kiara? She’s good. Maybe even better than you were at her age.”

Spike groaned, certain he’d never lived up to his adopted hair colour so spectacularly. Even if he was right, the himbo ought to know better than to make comparisons. But he just kept digging himself deeper into that hole.

Buffy’s face had gone pinched and white with rage, but the Spike in the room with her didn’t even notice.

“Any one of the girls who fought in Sunnydale could’ve done what you did tonight. Or any other bloody night.”

“Sure,” she said, a fixed grin spreading across her face.

“Lucy’ll never be ready if you don’t let her try,” Captain Oblivious continued earnestly. “They have to learn what it’s like to get their arses handed to ‘em. You coddle the lot of ‘em.”

Buffy’s jaw dropped. “And you think one of them _dying_ will help with that?”

He just rolled his eyes; still completely missing how angry she was. “Don’t put words in my mouth.”

Spike resisted the urge to go over there and bang the wanker’s head against the wall.

“Why bother when you’re doing such a good job all by yourself?” she simpered, sweet as belladonna pie.

He finally seemed to notice that wide, manic grin she’d plastered on. Scrubbing his hands through his hair and pursing his lips, village-idiot-Spike said quietly, “We are not spendin’ the rest of our lives babysittin’ Hellmouths.”

“The rest of my life, you mean,” she quipped. “You’ll be free to do whatever you want once I’m gone.”

This was a brand new and terrifying addition to their endlessly repeating argument about whether to stay in Cleveland training baby slayers or move to Europe and strike out on their own, doing anything she wanted so long as it wasn’t slaying. The one and only thing Buffy was born to do.

Spike was temporarily paralysed. It wasn’t like he’d given up anything worth having for this shot at a better life, but he also hadn’t yet thought through the fact that he’d almost certainly outlive Buffy, second chance or no. It was only the floor-shaking roar of “Don’t you dare start up that shite again!” that snapped him out of it. His lacklustre lookalike had suddenly dialled the rage up to eleven, and it took Spike aback. He hadn’t believed such a waste of space had it in him.

“Fine.” Buffy shrugged carelessly, her expression reminding Spike of that long-ago evening she’d made him desperate enough to go after her with a shotgun. “But it’s nice to know you think dying alone is so much better for everyone.”

“They’re not alone, you daft cow! Got each other, for a start. Then there’s the half-dozen Watchers underfoot. What the hell do they need you for?”

“So you'd abandon them? Just like that?”

He sagged suddenly, as if exhausted. “You’re not their mum, love. You made sure they kept theirs.”

That was when she took her first swing at him. Spike thought Buffy’d never looked more shaggable. In fact, he fully expected the shouting to turn to exactly that. But no. There was about thirty seconds of her throwing punches so wild he almost wondered if there was another bodysnatcher about, before it dissolved into words too quiet or muffled for the mic to pick up. He shuddered, watching his mirror image start in on the cuddling. Just like that soft git to try to live up to some women’s magazine version of masculinity. Certainly nothing like what Spike himself would do.

Annoyed, he switched off the screen and stomped outside to kill something. He’d thought spying on Buffy with one of his Initiative jailers had been painful. It had nothing on watching her with such a washed-out, meek version of himself.

-∞-

There were better moments, like watching Buffy go through her bathroom routine each morning. He’d watch her turn off the alarm and stumble out into the bathroom. Then he’d switch the feeds for teeth being brushed and the shower turning on. The first time Buffy began undoing the buttons of her depressingly sensible flannel pyjamas, Spike realised he’d never actually seen her naked before. She always stripped casually, perfunctorily, making him wish it was her choice to share. Not because he wanted a striptease, although that was also true. Just … stealing intimacies hadn’t improved any over the years.

There were no scars he could see, but there was a beauty mark about where he’d aim to hit her right kidney if he were still so inclined. It was always too far away and small for Spike to make out whether it was flat or raised – to guess how it might feel against the silk of her back – but it was a gift to know it was there all the same, however undeserved.

It was in that bathroom he looked his fill of her breasts for the first time. Not as perky as he’d imagined, and he’d imagined a lot. But this Buffy would be thirty-six in a couple months. The lingering roundness of childhood she’d once sported in her cheeks and chin and stomach were long gone, and that was the only obvious sign she was ageing. Her eyes had always been impossibly old. His Buffy had been getting leaner, towards the end, from too much crying and not enough eating. This Buffy was honed but healthy – no protruding bones or over-developed muscles. But she still moved like poetry, even if sleepiness made her clumsy. He’d never known that about her before, and he hated finding that out like this. Hated himself for doing it this way.

It always felt like porn once she got in the shower; most – some – days Spike turned it off. He still hadn’t decided whether the mornings he kept watching ‘til she finished stroking over every inch of her skin with some kind of body butter were better or worse than the ones that he didn’t.

-∞-

They did shag. And in ways and locations that Spike couldn’t bring himself to hate entirely, much as he wanted to.

But no matter how many times he told himself he’d watch it all the way through next time, he still ended up switching off the feed as soon as it started getting interesting. Spike couldn’t understand it. He’d spent what felt like half his life at the time lurking outside her bedroom window or hiding in her basement, having a giggle at Finn huffing and blowing and totally unable to give a girl an orgasm.

He’d thought he was torturing himself back then: listening to Buffy gush over a young prick with terrible stamina and no clue what he was doing because she didn’t know yet how it could be. Spike had never fooled himself Buffy might love him, but at least he knew he could satisfy her sexually. He’d studied every sound she made until he could almost map out how he’d touch her to make her scream.

He couldn’t even listen to her now, let alone watch. Maybe it was one too many stolen intimacies, when she deserved so much better. But he’d never aspired to be what she deserved – might as well wish for the moon. And it was hypocritical as all get-out considering how much quality time he’d spent with Mrs Palm and her five daughters watching Buffy soap up in the shower.

Eventually, he decided it was because he just couldn’t bear knowing how it might be between them second hand – without experiencing it for himself. Feeling her touch him, the heat of her gaze. Her love. He wouldn’t be a voyeur, not for that.

He accidentally caught them just afterwards once, sweaty and breathless and holding each other. There was the slightest smear of blood around his lips and the way she looked at him … Spike stopped pretending even to himself that he’d watch more after that. It was just too painful.

-∞-

Spike had initially been pretty pleased with the long-let motel he’d found to hole up in. But the longer he stared at the comings and goings at Buffy’s place, the more he recognised all the ways she’d managed to create a home – for herself, and for anyone who visited. His room felt poky and barren and depressing in comparison. She might not have inherited any of Joyce’s good taste in décor, but there was always such warmth there. Warmth that he watched for hours and hours every day but could never touch. He was always so cold.

Some days, imagining that eventually he’d be able to feel it himself – that the scenes he was studying could be stitched into his life – made it more bearable. Other days, he was just jealous and frustrated and incandescent with rage that it wasn’t him in that house, loving her better. On those days, he embraced the artic bitterness of the Cleveland winter and went out to kill his own kind with his bare hands until he was exhausted enough to hope for a dreamless sleep. He should have known better.

His nightmares had revolved around Buffy for years. For the longest time, whenever he woke up, he’d dreamt he saved her, then had to relive the loss along with the horror that it was all his fault. Once the reality of her death finally sank in, that changed to watching her relive all his worst memories – sometimes he’d even be trapped in someone else’s body, inflicting them. Now, the new reality Faith had birthed for his own dimension was entering the mix: there were so many ways he could’ve got Buffy and Dawn killed. And he was certain that whatever solution Faith found, it revolved around his actions. It was the best reasoning he had for why Dawn was so anxious to have him gone.

He could not afford to fuck up a second reality. He had to learn as much as he could and make absolute sure he got it right this time.


	5. Chapter 5

At Christmas, the house got locked up so Buffy and her lesser half could go stay with Dawn and Michael. Spike was all set to follow them there, only he chickened out at the last minute. Seeing Buffy with another version of himself was a pain he was (almost) learning to live with. But Dawn? He didn’t trust himself not to do something stupid that might end every hope he had of building a new future for himself here. Particularly since this should be the Christmas she’d tell them about peeing on a stick Christmas Eve, and Spike didn’t think he could handle watching them all fall in love with the Adèle-bump only to bury her. Not again.

Instead, he got black-out drunk, alone in his motel room, and didn’t even approach full consciousness again until the twenty-eighth. Still wasn’t the worst Christmas he’d ever had, but the never-ending hangover made for a fitting monthaversary for his trip into the past.

By the time they were all back in Cleveland again, Spike couldn’t take the watching and waiting and barely interacting anymore. Fighting aside, Faith was the last person to touch him. From January, he snatched at any and every opportunity to stand in for the other Spike. And with the baby slayers, too, not just Buffy. He even risked a full night of routine hunting with Olivia once, gambling she’d never find out her Spike stayed home. He reckoned he might even have taught her a thing or two. Christ knew the other Spike didn’t care enough about any of those girls to pay proper attention. Spike thought it was because they were Buffy’s, not his. It drove him nuts.

He couldn’t risk being himself, which was its own kind of hell. But at least he was starting to live a life again. He’d worry about making it _his_ life later.

-∞-

In the middle of January, Spike was masquerading as the inferior copy again when the call came through. Some bizarre Christian cult was trying to open up a new Hellmouth somewhere in Indiana, all hands on deck.

Bloody inconvenient, is what it was. Buffy’d expect the other one to know all about it if Spike listened in; so he did his best to at least look like he was too busy busting heads to pay attention. But he couldn’t help reacting when he realised it was Rupert Giles on the other end of the phone. It was the first sign he’d seen or heard she still had any contact with the bastard.

His Buffy had been livid when her Watcher suggested they kill Dawn to stop Glory, and Spike certainly hadn’t ever forgiven him, nor had anyone else in their dimension. Not once Spike told them about it, anyway. This Buffy’s well of forgiveness must run deep, and for more than just reformed vampires. For all he thought Giles deserved at least another twenty years in the doghouse, it gave Spike hope some things might come out alright in the end. Even if his plans exploded in his face like every other time he’d tried to do anything more complex than making it up as he went along. Because if Buffy could forgive Rupert Giles wanting to sacrifice Dawn to save her, she could forgive anything.

Spike scarpered before the call ended, racing back to his motel to pack up. It was time to finally put his plan into action. He just hoped he’d learned enough for it to work. It was all happening much faster than he’d expected – much nearer seven years in the past than six.

-∞-

There was a freak heat wave in Jasper, the temperature rocketing up to the low teens. It even made national news. And the night they arrived it was raining fish, of all bloody things. Spike tried to remember if this had happened in his own past, but even though he vaguely remembered Faith talking about things getting biblical a few years back, he’d assumed at the time it was a Samuel L Jackson reference. Still might well have been – no telling whether they’d been fighting the same fights all these years.

It was chaotic and wet and slippery. Too much wind and nowhere near enough visibility. The air stank, and it bloody hurt being pelted with each frantically wriggling fish, all of them desperately trying not to suffocate. Spike could feel he was moving towards wherever Buffy was – always could sense her, something he’d actually forgotten about after she died. He had a vague notion there were more slayers around, too, but he was almost completely sense-blind otherwise. The world had shrunk to one tiny, wet, stinking circle no more than a foot around him in any direction. Whoever was running this shit show, they’d done themselves a hell of a disservice. Magicking up weather this idiotic, any vamp and most demons’ senses would be as useful as a full human’s. Or a slayer’s.

Spike was slipping and sliding through a maze of alleys created by stacks of building materials and shipping containers, waiting to pop out into the wide open space where the laying of foundations for a new apartment block had unearthed something mystical and dangerous that the cult they were after was using to open up a new highway to hell. Or so said the sycophantic infant aspiring to Watcher-dom the Wanker General himself had sent over two nights ago.

What Spike hadn’t expected was another sodding tower, all scaffolding and steel struts rising so far up into the storm he couldn’t even see where it ended. He would’ve screamed if he wasn’t convinced it’d land one of those stinking fish in his mouth.

He wasn’t that far behind Buffy and the Wet Wastrel. But by the time he finally caught up to them and three or four of the Cleveland slayers at the base of the tower, they were already fighting back a medium-sized army of something that looked suspiciously like medieval crusaders, complete with chain mail.

Of course, that could just be the fish clouding his vision, and they were really up against a bunch of circus clowns.

Regardless, Spike threw himself straight into the fray. In all that chaos, he could be Joyce Summers back from the dead and no one would ever notice. As he dodged yet another sword coming at him way too fast, he decided they couldn’t be full-human. Demonic zealots; just what he’d always wanted. He wished he knew how they were managing to fight blithely on, draped in all those crosses. A bit of whatever was protecting them would go down a treat right now, ta very much. Even with everything else pelting down on him from the sky, Spike could still feel the religion stinging faintly wherever his clothes didn’t cover him. It wasn’t long at all before staying undead took up all his attention, and he lost track of where anyone else was or what they was doing.

Then Oliva crashed into him, hands empty, with what was probably her own stake jutting out of her left hip. He’d bet everything he had it was because she’d run into something she couldn’t handle half-cocked without cover. He couldn’t smell any blood, which meant whatever was leaking out of her was getting washed away by the rain as fast as it came out. So long as she got out of the fight, she’d probably survive. Without really thinking about it, he grabbed her arm in one hand, and one of the struts above him in the other, then swung her and himself up onto the scaffolding above. With the floorboards of the next walkway up protecting them from the worst of the storm, Spike could suddenly see again. Olivia looked terrified but brave with it – and like she was expecting a bollocking. He’d always known that girl wasn’t stupid. Right after they landed, there was a brief moment she stayed curled up against him, giving into the pain a bit and letting herself be held. He shocked himself by going along with it and squeezing a little tighter.

In the respite from the rain, all that delicious slayer blood suddenly suffused his senses. Spike vamped out before he could stop himself.

Olivia laughed, all signs of terror vanishing, as she gently pulled away. Then, wincing, she pulled a long knife from a sheath at her back. Clasping his arm with her other hand, like he was the one who needed reassuring, she shouted, “I’ll be fine.” It was only just audible. She cocked her head towards the fray below. “You better get back down there.”

Feeling somehow more battered and bruised by her immaculate shining trust than anything the buggers down below had done, Spike just nodded and jumped off the ledge and onto the back of … someone. Fists and fangs still made sense, at least.

-∞-

The battle had always been moving slowly underground, as they pushed the super-powered knights back to where they kept springing from. It wasn’t much longer before Spike found himself in a narrow, low-ceilinged tunnel, hemmed in on every side with what he was now pretty sure were original undead Knights Templar. Without the rain and fish offering any protection (only just useful enough to be noticeable once it was gone) the crosses all over the knights tunics were now making Spike’s eyes sting and his skin blister like he was swimming through bleach. Everything was cramped and awkward, no finesse possible, and any weapon bigger than a baby’s arm was completely useless.

Something got caught up under his feet, and it took him far too long to realise it was a body: one of the slayers. The fact she was a youngish girl, here in this tunnel, told him that much. She was so badly beat up and he was so nose-blind, she could’ve been any one of the three who were that size and colouring. He really hoped it wasn’t Lucy. She fought about as well as Dawn did, which was half-decent for a human and beyond useless for a slayer. But she was a team player like none of the rest were. Without her smoothing the way, Spike reckoned the other girls’d kill each other inside a week. Whoever put that Cleveland team together was an idiot, and it was mortifying the other Spike hadn’t done anything about it.

To his even more excruciating embarrassment, he found himself momentarily ignoring his opponents and reaching for Angelus’ long-gone amulet. But this wasn’t Sunnydale, and there was no magic talisman to save the world today, even if Spike had been willing to use one. He just hoped dying in a column of fire wasn’t on the cards. He didn’t think he could take watching anyone else do that, let alone offering himself up for a second sacrifice.

The irony was not lost on him that was exactly the sort of ending he’d planned for himself just before hopping dimensions.

A few seconds later, Spike bested the last of the knights between him and the light at the end of the tunnel and burst into a blinding ring of construction lamps in the embryonic basement of the apartment building. Blinking, he took in the scene in front of him: Buffy was pinned down in one corner, taking on an abnormally large, grey-skinned bloke who looked like he’d dressed up as Jesus for Halloween. The hair and beard were particularly dubious: more askew than they should be, plus _ringlets_.

Willow was glowing pure white – which freaked Spike right out – and chanting something over the edge of what looked like a black hole straight through to China. He could feel it sucking air and sound and heat out of the rest of the room, which was closer to what he’d consider normal for her magic. Total normality would be nearly-if-not-outright killing everyone she was meant to be protecting. The doppelgänger and Kiara, plus Tanya, Vanessa, and Nadina (the next three best fighters out of the baby slayers), were in a loose circle around Willow, keeping the remaining Shites Templar from getting too close.

No one had noticed Spike yet, but the melee was too contained and the room was nowhere near big or dark enough for plan A to work anymore. _Someone_ would notice there were two of them eventually. There was a part of Spike that was almost grateful for that. He’d never been that good an actor, and he was bound to get something important wrong after so little time to watch and memorise the details of this particular road not taken. But before he could get to work on Plan B, he had to survive the rest of the knights currently trying to take his head off.

Then Buffy got knocked down. It wasn’t for long – she swept Poundshop-Jesus’ legs out from under him as she went, changing the odds back to her favour. But that one moment was still enough to distract the lot of them. Spike’s sword got knocked out of his grasp, and Vanessa took a hit that would’ve killed a normal girl. The worst of it was Willow: her chanting stuttered and slowed, magic faltering along with her voice, before surging back up again as Buffy leapt to her feet. Only by that point, the damage was done. The slayers had all moved around a bit, losing ground against the onslaught in some places, so when the white light surged back up to full force, its edges bounced Kiara straight into the hole. The Wretched Embarrassment to Vampiredom was still too engrossed by his wife’s barely-there stumble to notice, so by the time he started scrambling to catch Kiara, Spike’d already finished mourning the poor bitch.

Like all life-or-death fights, nothing took longer than the blink of an eye, and yet at the same time every movement seemed to stretch into eons.

As Spike edged agonisingly slowly towards Willow and her protective circle, he could eventually see that Kiara was still alive, dangling from a rocky outcrop a few feet down. To his absolute horror, the Deadweight Dullard dropped onto his stomach and started trying to pull her out again. With at least twenty super-strong trained fighters _with swords_ still bearing down on the remaining slayers, none of whom could hold a candle to Kiara on their best bloody day.

Despite himself, Spike started to panic, desperately trying to make those last few feet to the – now dangerously staggered and wavering – circle of slayers. He felt Buffy’s gaze land on him. It burned as it always did, even in the long-gone days when he hated her. But for all she was watching now, Spike was almost certain she hadn’t seen her husband go down or him bursting through to take his place – she’d been too busy keeping herself alive. But by the time he could afford to look up at her properly, to make certain of it, she’d already turned back to her own fight.

By the time he finally reached them, Willow and the girls had to have seen him coming, had to have realised something strange was going on. But it made no difference: they all remained totally focussed on their tasks. Spike even remembered to be grateful they’d learned from their earlier slip with Buffy.

He had to choose his actions bloody carefully now. Whatever he did, he must make it look as if he was doing his utmost to save the doppelgänger.

He spun around, falling in line between Tanya’s weak right-hand-side and the yawning gap Nadina was struggling to cover, snarling at them to tighten up the configuration so no one could get past. Then he snatched a sword out of his nearest opponent’s hands and lopped off another knight’s head – even these last few seconds of being limited to claws and teeth was harrowing; he couldn’t imagine how the girls’d been coping with nothing but stakes earlier on. Spike stepped back, straight into his alternate’s place, keeping the knights away from Willow and, now, Kiara’s last shot at survival. He’d keep fighting with them for a bit, at least until some better option presented itself. No point in pissing Willow off when her magic was actually working for once; she might regret it later, but he knew absolutely that she’d kill him in a heartbeat if it was that or the world.

As he took position, Spike finally met Buffy’s eyes. It was the first time he’d had the courage to risk it. His knees nearly buckled from the love he saw there. He’d never truly believed it was possible for her to love any version of him – even half-convinced himself he’d been imagining things when time-travelling Buffy dropped into his life. For all the (far too many) times he’d conjured up a happy-ever-after in his head, he’d never quite been able to parse the details of how it would feel to know she really, truly loved him. But in that shining, sacred moment, everything changed. He realised that any plan he’d made was a delusion. She _loved_ her _husband_. And Spike never could come between Buffy and anything or anyone she loved.

Insides hollowed out entirely, despair nipping at his heels, Spike let his emotions shut off. He couldn’t think about anything except countering the next strike. Distantly, he knew he was probably taking more damage than was safe, but he didn’t feel a lick of physical pain. The only thing that mattered was that Buffy mustn’t ever be a widow.

By the time the Mock Messiah was beyond all hope of resurrection and the last of the demonic god-botherers were ash, Spike reckoned he’d saved the pallid plonker’s life four and a half times – the half being that moment he’d first stepped into the circle. But the final one was the most impressive. How either of them had survived that last berserker Spike didn’t think he’d ever know. The pain hadn’t hit yet, but he could feel, distantly, that it wasn’t going to be pretty when it did.

Kiara was fine – barely a scratch on her – but Vanessa was gone and Spike wasn’t holding out much hope for Tanya. Without really noticing it, he’d moved back to the very edge of the basement as the rest of them gathered round Willow and the fallen girls in the centre of the room.

“Thanks,” Buffy called over her shoulder, already gone from avenging angel to haggard and weepy after seconds of thinking her Spike was dead. Not only did she fail utterly to notice who saved him, but she wasn’t even curious enough to look up for two seconds and find out. All her attention was focussed on touching every part of that poor, sad, housebroken bastard. Spike legged it, as fast as he could.

Back in the temporary construction office he’d dumped his stuff in, drenched to the skin and so exhausted and hurting he could barely stand, Spike tried to focus on where to go from here. He’d never been so completely without ties before. For the first time in his existence, no matter where he went or what he did, no one knew and no one cared. A bloke could go stark raving mad staring into that kind of abyss.

Spike stripped off his wet things, and checked himself over for injuries. It was bad – if he didn’t get hold of some blood soon, he’d be in trouble – but not so bad as it might have been. He’d be able to get himself out of Jasper without help, which was the most important part.

He took a box cutter to his stupid bleached hair and hacked it all off. He hadn’t been bald since the last time he deloused, decades ago. Once it was all gone, he stepped back out into the rain, naked, and let it wash it all away. He felt clean and weightless, and for the barest moment, he thought he’d be okay.

Shaking with cold, he put on dry clothes, grabbed up his duffel, and was about to walk back out into the still-howling (but now mostly natural) storm and get on his motorcycle when he remembered. He had nowhere to go. No one to go to. Suddenly, whatever he’d been using to hold his pieces together ran out. Everyone he loved was dead, and he’d just frittered away his last hope of getting any of them back again. For the first time since Willow told him she’d be sending Faith back in time, Spike broke down and cried. Great howling sobs that made his jaw ache and set his ribs on fire until he finally passed out on the concrete floor from pain and exhaustion.

When he woke up, Willow was there. The other Willow.

“Hey,” she said. “Spike.”

“You ever bloody knock?”


End file.
